The First Stitch: Straight Gobelin

The first stitch I selected to do for my sampler is the Straight Gobelin. It seems simple, but it tossed me right into my first problem.

I selected a skein of floss from my floss purchases (a dark red), threaded a needle (size 18) and started in the upper left corner with an 18" length. Since I was a little leery of the waste knot method of starting, I instead pulled the needle and thread through until about an inch was left on the backside of the canvas, and then held it with my free hand while I did the first couple of stitches so it would be caught in the back by the work. This seems to work fairly well but is a bit of a pain because the thread has to be held.

After a row and change of stitches, I looked at it overall and felt I had a problem: the canvas was clearly visible between the stitches. This wasn't really what I was expecting, especially after reading about canvas coverage in The Needlepoint Book. However, I soldiered on. When I got near the end of my thread, I used the needle to tuck about an inch's worth underneath the stitching on the back of the canvas and trimmed it with the thread scissors.

Lessons Learned:

• Use a lighter-colored thread to see stitch definition better, at least in the case of this sampler. (Not implemented yet)
• Needles should not make the holes in the canvas permanently larger when pushed through. (Solved by later switching to a size 28 needle, and then a size 24 needle)
  
• A left hander should probably start in the upper right corner, if one is a corner kind of person. (Fix this in future projects)
  
• There's a problem with 6-strand Cotton floss on 18-count canvas. (See later posts for the solution)
  
• Holding the end of the thread at the back to catch it in the stitching on the back is an inefficient way to bury the thread because of the work it requires. (See later posts on my implementation of the waste knot).